GOING UNDERGROUND IN THE OPAL
CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.
IF IT WEREN’T for his girlfriend telling
him about Coober Pedy during a dinner
in New York, American photographer
Elliot Ross would never have known of
the existence of the South Australian town
on the other side of the world with fewer
than 2000 inhabitants.
Fascinated by his New Zealand-born
partner’s story, Ross decided to visit
and capture the town where geographic
isolation and environmental factors have
shaped an unusual way of life. “I flew
to Adelaide and took a Greyhound bus
850 kilometres north,” Ross says. “You
wouldn’t believe it, but the moment I
boarded, Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’
started playing on the radio. We hit a
kangaroo on the way. It was super cliche,
but got me in the spirit right away.”
He arrived at 5am and was met by
Coober Pedy’s “ambassador”, a 203cm,
heavy-voiced bear of a man by the name
of Duncan. They drove to Duncan’s
house; like the majority of inhabitants
he lives underground to combat the
withering summer temperatures that
often surpass 40 degrees. Kupa piti
loosely translates to “white man’s hole”
in the local Indigenous language.
Having grown up in an isolated
farming community in the heart of
the US himself, Ross was immediately
attracted to Coober Pedy, which owes
its existence almost exclusively to
white opal. But he didn’t want to focus
as much on the mining aspect or the
underground houses – he wanted to
look at the community itself.
“It’s a lot more international than I
expected,” Ross explains. “More than
45 different nationalities came during
the 60s and 70s to try their hand at
opal extraction, often by independent
means and homegrown innovation. I got
interested in the small-town dynamics
with this twist of multi-nationality.”
Ross spent time with different
people, capturing the locals and their
town. There’s the man who bought a
decommissioned mine to transform it into
a hotel, but ended up making it his own
home. Ross photographed him on a chair
among the rubble of his future bedroom.
In the 90s a law was passed restricting the
size of mining claims, in effect shutting
out larger mining corporations. Ross met
a man who had invented his own creative
extraction machine. Then there’s Duncan
– the gentle giant host – whose signature
dish is ribs, microwave rice, garlic bread
and soft drink. “Despite their unusual
circumstances I wanted to show their
daily lives, which is like anywhere else,”
says Ross.
Now, after 100 years of official
existence, the town of Coober Pedy is at
a critical crossroads: deciding whether
mining or tourism is the future, and
how to prevent the younger generation
moving away from the remote lifestyle.
“There seem to be many more
questions than answers for the
inhabitants,” says Ross. “But regardless
of the direction the community
ultimately takes, isolation will always
be the presiding feature, obstacle and
possible demise of this small settlement
on the great red plain.”
by Jorrit R Dijkstra
» For more, see elliotrossstudio.com.
IN THE ROUGH
OPALS
THE BIG ISSUE 10 – 23 FEB 2017 23